This week, we go back to 1831 and the Croydon Canal, where two empty boats were found drifting on still water. A week later, the body of a pregnant woman surfaced. Her name, or at least the name history gives us, was Mary Clarke.
Mary had been seen days earlier preparing to meet the father of her unborn child. She was dressed in a fine cotton gown, a black silk cloak and a white straw bonnet, with a small key in her pocket that remains one of the most frustrating details of the case. But despite her injuries, despite the missing companion who vanished from the record, and despite the two unnamed men last seen with her, the inquest returned a verdict of “found drowned”.
Nearly 200 years later, we’re left with a woman no one claimed, a canal that no longer exists, and a question that still hasn’t been answered: who put Mary Clarke in the water?
This episode includes discussion of pregnancy, suicide, violence against women, murder, drowning and historical attitudes towards unmarried pregnant women.
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Produced and hosted by Hannah Williams & Rachel Baines
Mixed & edited by Purple Waves Sound (A.K.A Will)
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